To the unrivalled capabilities of the Arabic language was principally due the success of those who employed it in all branches of literature. That rich and sonorous idiom, isolated for centuries in the Desert, had been formed and perfected without contamination by extraneous influences. The peculiarities of its alphabet, the infinite multitude of its terms, the complexity of its conjugations, and the obscurity of style which its writers regard as an excellence worthy of assiduous cultivation, render its mastery by one not native to the soil a task of almost insuperable difficulty. The perfection of its grammar and the elegance of its construction imply many centuries of use and much literary practice for their establishment. Each tribe had contributed to its copious vocabulary. The number of synonyms by which objects of common occurrence or habitual usage are designated is enormous. It contains eighty names for honey, two hundred for a serpent, five hundred for a lion, one thousand for a sword. It has exerted a marked and permanent influence on the idioms and the literature of Europe. Many of our most familiar English terms have come down from it unaltered. French abounds in words and expressions derived from the same source. Spanish has been called a corrupt Arabic dialect, and its richness in proverbs is due to the use of that tongue in the Peninsula for nine hundred years. The influence of the Sicilian Moslems on Italian is very apparent. The Romance languages were largely Arabic and Hebrew. This exuberance gave the poet an immense advantage for the exercise of his talents. The periodical literary assemblies, popular in Arabia, had the effect of improving the diction of the competitors, and contributed greatly to the embellishment of the language in which their poems were composed. Facility of versification was so common that its possession was not regarded as an accomplishment, except where it produced results denoting unusual ability. So many words have a similar termination in Arabic, that in poems of considerable length the same rhyme is alternately made use of from beginning to end. Improvisatorial skill, so highly esteemed by the Moors, was rather mechanical than the result of poetic inspiration, and was immensely facilitated by the abundance of terms at the command of the poet, whose mind was trained to this mental exercise from childhood. Arabic versification readily adapts itself to every quantity and variation of numbers required by the practice of the art of poetical composition. It is lavish in the use of metaphor, simile, antithesis. In elegance of style, in brilliancy of expression, and in fertility of fancy it presents examples not inferior to the finest models of classic antiquity. Its characteristic extravagance was the result of national taste, a taste often perverted by a passion for the weird and the supernatural. It delights in the representation of abstractions as material beings; it bestows life and speech upon the zephyr and the rose. The play of words in which it abounds, the elaborate and quaint conceits dependent upon pronunciation and upon phrases susceptible of varied significance, while they may obscure the diction, are never suffered to interfere with the harmony. The vivacity of Arabic poetry is one of its greatest charms. Its imagery is born of the fiery imagination of the East; its proficiency in the delineation of human passion is the fruit of centuries of study, reflection, and jealous rivalry. Perfect familiarity with the poems of the pre-Islamic Bedouins, regarded as models by every generation of their descendants, was considered an indispensable qualification of every well-informed scholar. The Arabs were so deeply impressed by the potent influence of poetical genius that they assigned it a place among the kabbala of magical science. Rhymes were introduced into the most solemn discussions. An impromptu couplet opportunely spoken was often the surest recommendation to the favor of a prince. Poetic sentiment was such an essential characteristic of the Arab intellect that even grave metaphysical and historical treatises were designated by the most romantic and whimsical titles.
Under the Mohammedan dynasties of Spain the wit and skill of the successful poet claimed and enjoyed the highest consideration. It has been aptly remarked that poetry was the central point about which revolved the intellectual life of the Andalusian Moors. Its influence upon the invaders was rather augmented than diminished by the transplantation of the lyrics and satires of the Desert to the soil of Southern Europe. The universality of its cultivation and the honors and emoluments which rewarded popularity expanded its productions to an enormous volume. At the close of the reign of Al-Hakem II., hundreds of manuscripts were required for the catalogues of the poetical works which crowded the shelves of the imperial libraries. Verse was employed alike in the most momentous and the most unimportant transactions of life, in the congratulation of royalty, in the celebration of triumphs, in the familiar intercourse of neighbors and friends, in the frivolities and gossip of the seraglio. Its power over the nature of the sensitive and impulsive Asiatic cannot be measured. It diminished the agony of the suffering. It hastened the cure of the convalescent. Its voice brought temporary oblivion to the dungeon of the captive, its pictures of paradise lighted the dark pathway to the grave. Rhyming prose was used in private correspondence by all persons who laid claim to good breeding. The Hispano-Arab histories are filled with verses. They were frequently employed to relieve the severity of scientific works, whose authors were equally celebrated as philosophers and as poets. Diplomatists inserted couplets and stanzas of more or less merit and propriety into their state papers. The passport given to the great scholar Ibn-Khaldun by Mohammed V., King of Granada, was written in rhyme.
In the classification of subjects, amatory poems, as in all countries which acknowledge the power of the lyric muse, claim precedence. It is obviously unfair to judge Hispano-Arab poetry by the accepted rules of modern criticism. The totally different conditions of society, the education of an audience whose ideas of literary excellence and correctness of expression were strongly at variance with ours; the similes, now obscure, but then full of meaning to the appreciative listener, the idioms of a copious and extremely complicated language but imperfectly understood by the most accomplished scholars of our day, ignorance of the physical environment of the writer, the distance and vicissitudes of nine centuries, all contribute to render the formation of an accurate and impartial opinion on the merits of Arab poetry an arduous, indeed an almost hopeless, task.
The exalted position occupied by women under the Arab domination in Spain gave them an influence, and invested them with an importance, elsewhere unknown in the Mohammedan world. This peculiar social condition had a tendency to restrain the sensual instincts of the bard, not yet entirely emancipated from the coarse traditions of the Desert, while at the same time it encouraged the cultivation of generous and lofty sentiments. Admiration for the qualities and accomplishments of the mind gradually supplanted the hyperbolical praise of corporeal perfection, which had hitherto predominated in the compositions of the Arabian poet. The verses of the later era of the khalifate allude to the perfections and graces of the sex in terms of honor and veneration worthy of the noblest paladin of chivalry. This admiration was intensified by the eminent rank attained by many women in the literary profession. The female relatives of khalifs and courtiers vied with each other in the patronage and cultivation of letters. Ayesha, the daughter of Prince Ahmed, excelled in rhyme and oratory; her speeches aroused the tumultuous enthusiasm of the grave philosophers of Cordova; her library was one of the finest and most complete in the kingdom. Valada, a princess of the Almohades, whose personal charms were not inferior to her talents, was renowned for her knowledge of poetry and rhetoric; her conversation was remarkable for its depth and brilliancy; and, in the academical contests of the capital which attracted the learned and the eloquent from every quarter of the Peninsula, she never failed, whether in prose or in poetical composition, to distance all competitors. Algasania and Safia, both of Seville, were also distinguished for poetical and oratorical genius; the latter was unsurpassed for the beauty and perfection of her calligraphy; the splendid illuminations of her manuscripts were the despair of the most accomplished artists of the age. The literary attainments of Miriam, the gifted daughter of Al-Faisuli, were famous throughout the Peninsula; the caustic wit and satire of her epigrams were said to have been unrivalled. Umm-al-Saad was famous for her familiarity with Moslem tradition. Labana, of Cordova, was thoroughly versed in the exact sciences; her talents were equal to the solution of the most complex geometrical and algebraic problems, and her vast acquaintance with general literature obtained for her the important employment of private secretary to the Khalif Al-Hakem II. Inherited genius for poetical composition, joined to constant familiarity with its exercise, the tendency of early education, the influence of intellectual association and example, the exalted estimation in which proficiency in it was held, the extraordinary facility afforded by the Arabic language for the formation of rhyme, the inherent predilection of the Asiatic for the employment of epigram, hyperbole, and allegory, called into existence a race of juvenile poets whose number and abilities seem, in our practical and unimaginative age, absolutely incredible. In readiness of improvisation and quickness of repartee these youthful rhymers displayed talents scarcely to be expected of the most precocious intellect. Some of the rhyming couplets composed by the children of Moorish Spain which have descended to us, in propriety of expression and elevation of feeling, in aptness of comparison and in elegance of style, are not inferior to the classic productions of educated maturity.
Nor was the taste for and the delight in the arts of extemporaneous composition confined to the eminent and the learned; all classes practised it, and it was said that in the district of Silves alone there was hardly a laborer to be encountered who could not improvise creditable verses with facility. Volumes devoted to the lives and productions of the princely and noble poets of Andalusia were published; the palaces of royalty and the mansions of the great fairly swarmed with men of genius and poetasters, greedy of wealth and ambitious of renown. The ancient and venerated models of the Desert were never lost sight of in the productions of Moslem Europe. Their striking peculiarities, their lofty sentiments, their obscure metaphors, their extravagant panegyrics, their fantastic imagery, were regarded as merits which, while they might provoke, would ever defy imitation. In Andalusia, however, the enlarged and humanizing ideas of an advanced civilization, the steady march of material and intellectual improvement, familiarity with the literary masterpieces of antiquity and intercourse with foreign nations, modified to some extent the character of the subjects treated by the Moorish poet, although his style remained the same. Similes deduced from the nomadic life of the Bedouin—a life abandoned, centuries before, for the monotonous occupations of trade and agriculture—still, in the midst of conditions incompatible with the existence of predatory habits, and side by side with the tribal hatred whose intensity never diminished, maintained their universal ascendency. Adroitness in the metrical art; the gift of combining the infinite resources of the Arabic idiom in complicated phrases and rhymes which nothing but the enthusiasm and penetration of the illuminated could understand and unravel; the introduction of mysterious allegories, remote and obscure analogies, bold and striking antitheses,—these were the artificial excellences of Hispano-Arab poetry. The perfect comprehension of its productions implies an acquaintance with the language practically unattainable by a foreigner. The original form of Semitic poetry, whether Hebrew or Arabic, was improvisatorial; it was inspired by passing events; it was gay or plaintive, didactic or satirical, but never solemn and grandly impressive, like the sublime flights of the Grecian muse. The Arab poet was deficient in the dramatic faculty. His versatility, elsewhere remarkable, was unequal to the composition of an epic. His ignorance was so profound that he could not even give a correct definition of tragedy or comedy. To the greatest scholars of Mohammedan Spain, men who knew Aristotle by heart, and who were capable of the instant solution of the most difficult equations of Conon and Euclid, the works of Sophocles, Æschylus, and Euripides were unknown. The mental constitution of the Arab was thus not adapted to the creation of plays, a form of literature also discouraged by his traditions; while his prejudices forbade the study of the classic models which his religion stigmatized as idolatrous and indecent. Poetical narration was not unfamiliar to him, but a lengthy historic or allegorical composition, either in blank verse or rhyme, which required sustained and protracted action, was both repugnant to his taste and beyond his powers.
While love-ditties were the favorite productions of the Hispano-Arab, the martial lyrics of battle and triumph, sonnets depicting the pleasures of wine with more than Roman freedom, and the mourful elegies suggested by the events of a decadent empire, claimed a large proportion of the efforts of his poetic genius. Among the myriad poets whose compositions have adorned the Moorish domination in Spain, it is difficult to attempt to distinguish a few of superior merit; yet the following may be designated as masters in that art whose possession was a passport alike to political eminence and popular veneration. Ibn-Hasn, Ibn-Zeidun, of Cordova, Abbas-Ibn-Ahnaf, were noted for the sweetness and beauty of their amorous songs; the martial airs of Ibn-Chafadscha, of Valencia, chanted by the Moslems in the front of battle, assisted in turning the tide of many a doubtful day; the bacchanalian verses of Ibn-Said, of Seville, were the delight of the corrupt and voluptuous Andalusian capital, and were even sung by the children in the streets; the keen satires of Ibn-Ammar of Silves—the unhappy memories of whose early life, passed in mendicity, tinctured his writings with bitterness even when raised by his talents to the highest posts in the kingdom—spared neither prince nor courtier in their indiscriminate and playful wit; Abul-Beka, of Ronda, Ibn-al-Lebburn, of Murviedro, and Ibn-al-Khatib, of Granada, described, in language of inexpressible beauty and pathos, the national calamities inflicted by Christian supremacy,—the dissolution of empire, the desecration of the sanctuary, the dismemberment of families, the exile of the vanquished, the horrors of servitude.
The ordinary lyrics of the Spanish Moslems were technically known as the Kasida and the Ghazal, and, in the composition of both, only the alternate verses were in rhyme. The sonnets of Petrarch are modelled after this peculiar method of versification, or rather after its imitations prevalent among the vagrant poets of Southern Europe. It was principally through the example afforded by the Moorish kingdom of Sicily that an intellectual impulse was imparted to the founders of Italian mediæval literature. The Mohammedan princes who governed that fertile island were generous and enthusiastic patrons of letters. The Normans, whose enlightened spirit preserved with little modification the laws and customs of a civilization whose benefits were so apparent, encouraged with especial favor the labors of the Arab muse. The compositions of the Sicilian poets embodied principles and were governed by canons identical with those in vogue beyond the Pyrenees. In a land abounding in classic associations, the scene of military and maritime events upon whose issue had depended the destiny of empires; whose striking natural features had given rise to the most charming fictions that adorn the productions of antiquity, and where the architectural monuments of Grecian elegance and grandeur recalled the magnificence of former ages; the Arab, enveloped in the exclusiveness of his own personality, fettered by the influence of inherited tradition, never departed from the beaten track of his ancestors. Physical environment, unusually so potent in the formation of taste and the modification of national impulse and individual characteristics, produced no visible effect upon the mental constitution of the Moorish poet. Everything else—physiological peculiarities, the general tendency of thought, the nature of the objects of intellectual inquiry, opinions of the benefits to be obtained from the prosecution of scientific pursuits, the occupations of daily life—underwent radical changes, but the methods of the poet remained to the last invariable. The persistence of this spirit of immobility is further demonstrated by the popular ballads of the conquerors to whom the Moslems bequeathed it. The striking resemblance of the songs of the troubadours to those of the Arabs indicate plainly the source whence the former derived their inspiration. Other circumstances, based upon national customs, go far towards confirming this opinion. The Mohammedan Peninsula abounded with itinerant rhymers and sonneteers. They travelled from mansion to mansion, everywhere welcomed with joy and hospitality. They attended the person of the prince. They formed an indispensable part of the retinue of every great household. Their poems were ordinarily improvisations, evoked by the occurrences of the moment or the suggestions of the locality. Their compensation was gratuitous, entirely dependent upon the caprice of the patron or the generosity of the auditory. The privileged character of their profession enabled them to use a boldness of speech and a freedom of criticism which an ordinary personage would not have dared to exercise. In their train often followed the story-teller, the prototype of the jongleur, whose lineal descendant may still be seen amusing with his coarse buffoonery the idle crowds of Tangier and Cairo.
The graceful courtesy and deference to the sex, which were the indispensable attributes of every gallant cavalier, in short, the very genius of chivalry, originated among the Spanish Mohammedans. The women of Christian Europe—except in countries influenced by Moslem culture—from the tenth to the fifteenth century received no such social consideration and enjoyed no such educational advantages as did their infidel sisters of the Peninsula. In Southern France and Italy a tolerant spirit, fostered by a light and pleasing literature, had invested woman with an eminent, indeed with a despotic, authority. Elsewhere it was far different. Condemned to unspeakable hardships; degraded by brutal associations; if of high rank, the mere plaything of a tyrannical master; if born in an inferior position, classed with beasts of burden; in every situation of life kept in ignorance; subject to insult, to oppression, to all the sufferings incident to a condition of humiliating dependence little removed from servitude, such was the lot of woman in orthodox Christendom. This state of moral and physical degradation long prevailed, save where intimate contact with Arab civilization produced a substantial and permanent improvement of social and intellectual conditions. The most important factor of this metamorphosis was the poetry of which the troubadour was the exponent. This erratic calling drew its members from every rank of society: it included sovereigns, princesses, nobles, peasants, beggars. As the rhyming instinct is not innate and almost universal in Europe as in Asia, the often unlettered troubadour was more highly considered in Languedoc and Calabria than was the wandering poet among the hypercritical literary dilettanti of Seville and Granada.
In addition to the presumption afforded by the resemblance of subject, style, and metre, the fact that only countries contiguous to, or directly influenced by, Moorish civilization during the Middle Ages developed a taste for poetry similar to that of the Arabs, furnishes strong corroborative evidence that the gai science, as the art of improvising verses was called, was of Arabic derivation. The natural haunt of the troubadour was the romantic, semi-tropical region washed by the waves of the northwestern Mediterranean. The genius of his poetry—ardent, extravagant, voluptuous—had nothing in common with the cold and sluggish spirit of the North. France and Italy were the only European countries whose boundaries coincided with those of the Moslems. In both the revival of learning, after centuries of darkness, first arose. France was the abode of the Huguenot and the Camisard; the birthplace of Henry IV. and Coligny; the seat of the Great Schism which rent the Church in twain; the vantage-ground of the philosophers who precipitated the frightful struggle for civil and religious freedom in the eighteenth century. Italy was the land of Galileo, of Bruno, of Savonarola, of the Medici; the home of the Florentine academicians, whose labors and experiments effected so much for the advancement of science; the scene of the most extensive reaction against mediæval ignorance,—a movement inaugurated in the immediate neighborhood of Rome, and in defiance of the vehement protest of the Papal See. The greatest names in Italian literature insensibly acknowledged their obligations to Arabic poetry, by adopting the style and rhythm of its European imitators, the troubadours. The peerless Dante himself did not disdain to follow and to advocate the observance of its rules. The Canzoni of Petrarch present innumerable points of resemblance to the productions of Moslem Sicily. Ariosto is greatly indebted to Elmacin. In the melodious and charming songs of Lorenzo, the same sources of inspiration are discernible, and the same rhyme is used. In England, the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer bear an unmistakable relation in form and metre to the mediæval compositions of Southern France. Nor was this powerful and all-pervading influence confined to poetry. The tales of Boccaccio have an Oriental cast. The very manner of their recital recalls the customs of the Desert. They are reminiscences of the popular calling of the Provençal jongleur and the Arabic story-teller. In the license of their expressions, in the wit of their repartee, in the amusing character of the events which they describe, they may be classed as realistic adaptations of the Thousand and One Nights. The patronage and example of the Emperor Frederick II. carried beyond the Alps the cultivation of letters, and with it the traditions of Sicilian civilization. From this literary transmigration originated the Minnesingers, German counterparts of the troubadours, whose elegant verses sensibly modified the innate coarseness of the Teutonic character, and introduced a spirit of refinement, in pleasing contrast with the drunken orgies of the banquet and the festival. Their two principal productions, the Minnesong and the Minnelay, were models of elegance of diction, beauty of sentiment, and perfection of rhyme. For more than a century they were the delight of all classes of German society, nor did any compositions of equal merit succeed them until the age of Goethe and Schiller. Into Germany were also introduced, by the influence of the Emperor, a spirit of inquiry, the foundation of all true knowledge, and the philosophical and heterodox ideas entertained by the educated Moslems of his Sicilian dominions. The ultimate effect of this enlightened policy upon the national mind, imperceptible at the time, but increasing in intensity with the lapse of centuries, was the defiant course of Luther, which established the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures and shook the foundations of the papal throne. The fact that these three countries, which alone were directly acted upon by the spirit of Arabic learning and the example of Moorish civilization, were the scene of the revival of letters, when the rest of Christendom was plunged in the most abject ignorance, is of profound significance in ascertaining the causes that, promoting the intellectual advancement of Europe, have culminated in the great scientific achievements of modern times.
In Moorish Spain great attention was paid to the study of the kindred subjects of theology and law. The commentaries on the rites of the various sects into which Islam is divided; the arrangement and review of the enormous mass of tradition which tends to elucidate or to confirm the ambiguous texts of the Koran; the digests of the decisions whose authority is considered unimpeachable, form a stupendous body of literature chiefly remarkable for the patience, the learning, and the labor necessarily employed in its compilation. The muftis and the faquis were the authorities whose office it was to explain perplexing questions of Mohammedan jurisprudence. In the system of the latter, a system generally remarkable for its simplicity and efficiency, the Koran was the guide of every magistrate. The rules were supplemented by the precepts and suggestions of the Sunnah, a collection of traditions derived from sources more or less authoritative, and transmitted through many generations. The conflicting interpretation placed upon ancient customs sanctified by prescription, and the disputed authenticity of many of them, gave rise to a swarm of sects whose rancorous disputes were often terminated by bloodshed. In the Moslem judicature, the sovereign was the sole fountain of justice. Heir to the patriarchal customs of the East, he often sat in judgment at the gate of his palace, heard the complaints of his subjects, composed their quarrels, reproved their faults, condemned their animosity, and decided upon their merits all controversies between worthy litigants. Under him was the kadi, in whom was vested civil and criminal jurisdiction, whose judgments were rendered and whose sentences—from the scourging and the cruel mutilations enjoined by the law to the supreme penalty of decapitation—were executed with a relentless promptitude little in accordance with modern ideas of criminal procedure. In these courts there were no opportunities for oratorical display; custom discouraged such exhibitions; and Arab eloquence, unlike that of other nations, was most concise and laconic. The doctors of the law and the commentators on the Koran received greater homage than any other class of Moslem men of letters. Their occupation invested them with a measure of the reverence enjoyed by the works to which their labors were consecrated; it implied the possession of superior knowledge, perhaps of inspiration; they were ordinarily personages of venerable appearance and irreproachable character; and upon their opinions, promulgated with all the authority of age, wisdom, and experience, depended the administration of justice and the preservation of order throughout the vast extent of the empire.